Reiterating his commitment to free and fair elections, President David Granger late yesterday afternoon said he is prepared to appoint a Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) as early Monday once he has the cooperation of the Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo.
“Guyanese, it is clear that elections have to be held in the shortest possible time and, therefore, it is crucial to appoint a chairman of the Elections Commission. This could be done as early as Monday if the Opposition is prepared to act in a consensual manner and in good faith,” Granger said in an address to the nation hours after the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) reaffirmed its June 18th ruling that the process used to appoint the former GECOM Chairman was flawed and unconstitutional.
The court yesterday also urged the political leaders to urgently expedite the process and appoint a replacement. The court made consequential orders in the GECOM case as well as the consolidated no confidence motion cases, bringing finality to the matters, which have engaged the court’s attention since May.
“Credible elections are essential to representative democracy. The credibility of the elections is dependent, in part, on the integrity of the Official List of Electors,” Granger said in his address before maintaining that a contaminated list can vitiate the credibility of elections.
“Guyanese, I met the Leader of the Opposition on 4th July in good faith. We discussed the process by which the nomination of persons would be submitted to me for the post of GECOM Chairman. Representatives of both the Government and the Opposition have met three times this week. However, that good faith has not been reciprocated by the Leader of the Opposition,” he said, before adding that it was his hope that the two sides would have been able to “hammer out” the list of six nominees in accordance with the CCJ’s guidelines.
“It is unfortunate that, despite the meetings between the two sides, the Leader of the Opposition rejected the idea of acting in a consensual manner. He chose to put forward candidates for the post who have been rejected previously,” the president said.He stressed that GECOM and not the Executive is in charge of the elections and it is that entity that has to advise the president on its readiness to conduct elections. “I commit to the holding of credible elections in the shortest possible time. Guyanese, I will devote all my energies until the forthcoming election to serving our people and our country and to delivering good governance,” he assured.
He opened his address by reminding that the Constitution of Guyana is “sacrosanct and supreme” and that the independence of the judiciary remains intact and the GECOM remains independent.
Further, he said the country is moving forward and urged “all our people, of whatever background when the election comes, to back myself, and the coalition to secure a better future for Guyana.”
Granger’s comments on the process to appoint a new Chairman echoed those made earlier in the day, before the court hearing, by Director General of the Ministry of the Presidency Joseph Harmon at a People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) press conference.
“We are interested in having a Chairman of GECOM as fast as possible because we want the elections as fast as possible,” Harmon told reporters at Congress Place, Sophia, while accusing Jagdeo of “pompasetting.”
According to Harmon, Jagdeo has used the process to deceive the nation and send negative and misleading messages to the court. “He met with the President and agreed to the talks; he agreed to the plenipotentiaries meeting; yet look at his rhetoric. From the first meeting, he sought to use the media to express unilateralism, citing the Constitution. It is clear if you check his rhetoric and positions taken that he is not acting in a consensual manner as laid out in Paragraph 28 of the Judgement of the Court, which states: “this approach gives the President a role in the identification of the six names,” he stressed.
He further claimed that since it was Jagdeo who decided to withdraw his team from the process to “hammer out” six nominees, “he will have to make the next move.”
‘Bizarre’
Jagdeo, meanwhile, yesterday said that he would write to President Granger to settle on the next step in the process.
“If their interpretation is that I need to reach out again then I will. I’ll write him a letter today,” he told a press conference immediately after the court made its final declarations yesterday.
According to Gail Teixeira, who led the opposition team during the process to identify nominees, they did not leave Thursday’s meeting with the understanding that they needed to reach out but Jagdeo noted that he will have her write to Harmon to clarify the president’s position on the next step forward.
Asked if he was open to experimenting with another way of possible reaching a consensus, Jagdeo suggested that he could get six names of people who headed elections commission around the world who might “not be unacceptable” but was unsure if this measure would be successful. “I don’t know, I don’t know what goes on in the head of… or their logic. Imagine the President sends me eight names to say can you consider these names and then we are told that of the eight names he sent not all of them enjoy their confidence. It’s bizarre. How do you deal with this sort of thing?” Jagdeo noted.
He added that the public could not understand “how hard it is to enter into talks when there is no predictability, no principle, no good faith, except a hodgepodge of flimsy excuses.”
The question of “not unacceptable” has been a sticking point for the opposition since 2017.
The process to settle on six nominees reached a stalemate after the President’s team was unable to say which names were “not unacceptable to the president,” as provided for in the constitutional provision.
“We still want to know and we would’ve hoped today we would’ve learnt which of the five shortlisted were not unacceptable to the President,” Teixeira told reporters following Thursday’s meeting. Former Attorney General Anil Nandlall who described the entire process as “almost farcical,” indicated that the representatives “thought it better to abort the process as it was not yielding what we thought it would yield, which is a set of names that enjoy acceptability of both sides.”
“When five are shortlisted and the government side cannot say that those five enjoy the acceptance of the president and then they bring eight names and they themselves have told us that they are unclear whether those eight names enjoy the confidence of the president, it means that this engagement is almost farcical,” he told reporters.
From the initial 18 names submitted prior to Patterson’s appointment, Jagdeo had once more floated Annette Arjoon-Martins, retired Justice of Appeal B S Roy, Gerry Gouveia, Joseph Singh (Retired Major General and former GECOM Chairman), attorney Kashir Khan, attorney Krisndatt Persaud, Lawrence Lachmansingh, Norman McLean (Retired Major General), Onesi La Fleur and Ramesh Dookhoo as possible nominees. President Granger subsequently suggested Patterson, Stanley Ming, Kesaundra Alves, Dr. Aubrey Armstrong, Kadim ‘Kads’ Khan, Kim Kyte-Thomas, and retired judges Claudette La Bennett and Stanley Moore.
